Who Knew?

 (50th anniversary of the murders of Andrew Goodman and friends)

Some meetings have too much on their agendas.

I should have shown him the future—

bare-assed, barefoot little brown-skinned kids,

fifteen years later,

adopted by Apple--

near their hovels

a flagship computer school.

Quonset efficiency

in the filth of a cliff-hanging mountain slum

in the mountainous state of Guerrero.

Who knew that the other stuff on the agenda

would seem too joyous

and ripe with tropicality,

in comparison to the Deep South

and its strange fruit?

No fruit grew on that crusty mountainside,

but he didn’t know that.

Who knew that he’d walk in

on a way out?

He did not join us builders…did not find the barrio montañoso

barren but hopeful,

as did we who went.

Who knew?

Not Andy.

He had no idea that

there were those dark country roads,

beat-up old cars with headlights off,

tailing.

Who knew the trade off?

It would have been easy

to find hope in the buzzing slum

of Pedro Martín.

He would have blessed his summer of ‘64

spent in the charcoal-smoky, crumbling hillsides,

sleeping in a half-built schoolroom,

covering his hands with callus,  

or tearing a toenail, trying to stop a

runaway wheelbarrow,

or lurching back in dreams ever-after,

for having turned over a nest

of simple deadly scorpions.

Who knew that a nest of scorpions

could wear the badges of law?

Who knew that he would be there and I here?

And while he toyed with a certainty

unknowingly,

who knew that that certainty

would zero-in on him and his friends?